Sohow do you get people to visit your site?

Just because you know that your web site is great, it doesn’t mean that everyone else does. There are thousands upon thousands of web sites floating around out there in cyberspace, and everyone has a piece of the pie. For everything there is, there exists a web site. Every single type of business that you could name has its own web site on the Internet. How are you supposed to get yours to stand out above so many others that are out there?

How do you get traffic?

Internet users know that search engines are your key to finding what you want. Search engines are a friendly little Internet tool that does the work for us. All we have to do is think about what we’re looking for in the vaguest of terms. For instance, you’re doing a research paper on the wives and daughters of King Henry the eighth of England. So, you go to a search engine and type in the keywords, “Henry VIII and wives.” Just like magic, the search engine instantly presents you with a list of web sites filled with information about King Henry and his many wives.

As most everyone knows, those sites that appear at the top of the list get visited most often. The top of the list is definitely where you want to be, so that potential visitors will see your web site proudly displayed among the best. But, in order to appear at the top of list, you need to know something about search engine optimization.

Which leads to the burning questions: what is search engine optimization? It sounds sinister, but really search engine optimization is simple and easy. The following is a list of tips that will help you with search engine optimization. Using these tips, your web site will appear closer to the top of that list, and you’ll get more traffic on your site:

-Simple, easy to spell keywords
Internet users don’t want to take a lot of time – with anything. They aren’t going to spend a lot of time looking at the bottom of a search engine list, and they aren’t going to be that specific or exacting (at least not in the first search) with the keywords that they use. Keep your keywords as simple as possible. Commonly misspelled keywords should be featured on your site under all possible spellings, to maximize the possibilities of getting hits to your site. Long, complex, and hard to spell words don’t get searched out very often, so be sure to use as many short, simple keywords as possible.

-Lots of links
Search engines love links, so include as many as possible on your site. Both internal links, links that link to pages within your own site, and external links are good. The more links you have, the better your chances with the search engines.

-Lots of content
The more content you have means the more possible keywords you’ll have on your site. Search engines look at sites for content and their rankings are based upon that content, so you’ll want to have plenty of it. Keywords without content is nothing, and search engines don’t give good rankings to sites that have lots of keywords but very little content. Even if you content isn’t the greatest, it won’t hurt your chances with the search engines.

Unfortunately, many website owners do not understand the importance of search engine visibility, which leads to traffic. They place more importance on producing a “pretty” website. Not that this is bad, but it is really secondary to search engine placement. Hopefully, the following list of common mistakes, made by many website owners, will help you generate more targeted traffic to your site…after all, isn’t that what you want.

1. Not using keywords effectively.

This is probably one of the most critical area of site design. Choose the right keywords and potential customers will find your site. Use the wrong ones and your site will see little, if any, traffic.

2. Repeating the same keywords.

When you use the same keywords over and over again (called keyword stacking) the search engines may downgrade (or skip) the page or site.

3. Robbing pages from other websites.

How many times have you heard or read that “this is the Internet and it’s ok” to steal icons and text from websites to use on your site. Don’t do it. Its one thing to learn from others who have been there and another to outright copy their work. The search engines are very smart and usually detect page duplication. They may even prevent you from ever being listed by them.

4. Using keywords that are not related to your website.

Many unethical website owners try to gain search engine visibility by using keywords that have nothing at all to do with their website. They place unrelated keywords in a page (such as “sex”, the name of a known celebrity, the hot search topic of the day, etc.) inside a meta tag for a page. The keyword doesn’t have anything to do with the page topic. However, since the keyword is popular, they think this will boost their visibility. This technique is considered spam by the search engines and may cause the page (or sometimes the whole site) to be removed from the search engine listing.

5. Keyword stuffing.

Somewhat like keyword stacking listed above, this means to assign multiple keywords to the description of a graphic or layer that appears on your website by using the “alt=” HTML parameter. If the search engines find that this text does not really describe the graphic or layer it will be considered spam.

6. Relying on hidden text.

You might be inclined to think that if you cannot see it, it doesn’t hurt. Wrong…. Do not try to hide your keywords or keyword phrases by making them invisible. For example, some unethical designers my set the keywords to the same color as the background of the web page; thereby, making it invisible.

7. Relying on tiny text.

This is another version of the item above (relying on hidden text). Do not try to hide your keywords or keyword phrases by making them tiny. Setting the text size of the keywords so small that it can barely be seen does this.

8. Assuming all search engines are the same.

Many people assume that each search engine plays by the same rules. This is not so. Each has their own rule base and is subject to change anytime they so desire. Make it a point to learn what each major search engine requires for high visibility.

9. Using free web hosting.

Do not use free web hosting if you are really serious about increasing site traffic via search engine visibility. Many times the search engines will eliminate content from these free hosts.

10. Forgetting to check for missing web page elements.

Make sure to check every page in your website for completeness, like missing links, graphics, etc. There are sites on the web that will do this for free.

This is just a few of the methods and techniques that you should avoid. Do not give in to the temptation that these methods will work for you. They will do more harm than good for your website.

Not only will you spend weeks of wasted effort, you may have your site banned from the search engines forever. Invest a little time to learn the proper techniques for increasing search engine visibility and your net traffic will increase.